We here at Milwaukee County First have been sounding the warning bell about the peril that the Milwaukee County Transit System has been facing. This peril only gets closer as time goes on. Seeing what was happening, 
various groups, such as the Quality of Life Alliance, had a referendum put to the county voters last November, asking if there should be a 1% dedicated sales tax to fund the transit and parks systems. The referendum passed.
However, for the past year, our elected leaders in Madison dithered and delayed any action. When they finally got around to adding it to the state budget last summer, they messed it up anyway and then Governor Doyle vetoed what was left. Doyle wanted to tie in the funding for Milwaukee County’s transit system in with a regional transit authority that would also oversee the transit systems in Racine and Kenosha Counties as well as the proposed KRM rail.
MCF argued that while the RTA and the KRM were good ideas, the most urgent matter was the Milwaukee County Transit system, which is facing massive cuts if a dedicated funding source was not found.
It appears that we were correct in our stance in more ways than one. This morning’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a report which states that the federal government won’t grant the money needed for the KRM system until the local transit systems have been stabilized:
Yet Federal Transit Administration officials have said they won’t approve the $207.5 million commuter railroad until the financial problems of the Milwaukee County Transit System and its Racine and Kenosha counterparts are solved, Ken Yunker, executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, told RTA members.
Therefore, the RTA and the KRM will be doomed to fail without additional help from Madison, said Milwaukee County Supervisor Michael Mayo, an RTA member.
Lawmakers are working with Gov. Jim Doyle to draft new legislation that would create more transit authorities with the power to levy various taxes to support the bus systems, said Dan Kanninen, Doyle’s legislative director. Kanninen said the bill could be introduced by the end of the year, for action when the Legislature reconvenes in January.
This isn’t what Doyle wanted, Kanninen stressed. In his recommended budget, the governor proposed a single body that would oversee both the KRM and public buses in Milwaukee, Kenosha and eastern Racine counties, funded by a 0.5% sales tax.
But legislators shot down that idea in the face of heavy sales tax opposition from Racine County. Instead, lawmakers created the KRM-only RTA, funded by a rental car tax, and approved a Milwaukee County transit authority to take over the bus system, funded by a 0.65% sales tax, with 0.5% for transit and 0.15% for municipal public safety agencies. Doyle agreed to the KRM-only RTA and its rental car fee of up to $18 a car, but he vetoed the county authority and sales tax, saying he wanted a truly regional approach to all transit.
Still, in deference to political reality, the new legislation would create multiple transit authorities that might eventually merge with the RTA. The Milwaukee County authority would still be funded by a 0.5% sales tax. Kenosha and Racine would have their own transit authorities, which could be funded by property taxes, local vehicle registration fees, hotel taxes, sales taxes or some combination of those options.
It is beyond time for the state legislature to stop playing their political games and just get down to business. They now have two bills that could have been done in one if they followed the will of the people and honored our voices when we spoke last November. They could have saved so much time and money and effort if they just had done the right thing to begin with.
To prod them into action, we need to make sure they hear our voices again. There are a few ways to do this. You can write, email and/or call your state representative and state senator and tell them that they need to pass these sales tax bills with all due haste.
You can also sign our petition, either online or the hard copy version.
And you can attend a rally that is being held this coming Saturday.
The rally will be at Veterans Memorial Park in West Allis, on the corner of 70th St. and Greenfield Ave. and will start at 1 p.m.
What do the people on your bus have to say about the RTA?
As I pointed out in the post, we feel that the RTA is a good thing, but that the political reality of things calls for immediate action on the MCTS and then rolling it into a RTA.